NNSA Blog

The Kansas City Plant officially began the move on Jan. 23 to the new National Security Campus. The new facility showcases innovation and cost savings, highlighted by environmentally friendly features and innovative space management.

Over the next 18 months, about 3,300 truckloads will transport some 2,800 pieces of equipment ranging from desk size to tractor trailer size. Estimates are that the entire move will use 30,000 crates – which if stacked would be more than five times the height of Mount Everest. Kansas City Field Office Manager Mark Holecek says the biggest challenges of the move are the sheer size and complexity of what is to be moved.

The on-time, on-budget project has boosted the local economy by generating more than 1,000 construction jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in needed economic development to the region, according to Holecek.

The new facility is certified as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold-rated green campus. It’s expected to save an estimated $100 million in operating costs from a combination of overhead reduction and sustainable strategies that cut energy consumption by more than 50 percent.

The phased-in approach has about 55 office personnel moving in January, joining skeletal shipping and maintenance staffs. Another 200 office employees will make the move next month, when the first of several manufacturing moving stages begin. By the time move-in is complete next year, 2,500 employees will relocate into five new buildings comprising 1.5-million-square-feet on the campus.

Dual operations will be under way at both facilities to ensure uninterrupted delivery of KCP’s mission critical components.

Sandia President and Laboratories Director Paul Hommert has been named 2013 Laboratory Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for his support of technology transfer activities at Sandia.

The award recognized the work during 2012 by Hommert and the entire Sandia tech transfer program. The FLC also honored Sandia and UOP, a Honeywell company, with the 2013 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for their work in bringing an innovative radioactive waste cleanup technology to the private sector.

More than 30 teams of middle school students from across the area will converge on West Texas A&M University Saturday for a competition that will test their mental mettle.

The students, who hail from 15 schools across the Panhandle, have been preparing for months to compete in the Science Bowl competition, which challenges students to answer questions in math and science for prizes, prestige and the right to represent the area at the national competition in Washington, D.C.

Pantex has sponsored the bowl for more than 20 years in hopes of fostering a love of science and math in the youth of the Texas Panhandle.

About the photos:Pantexans brush up on their skills in preparation for this weekend’s Pantex Middle School Science Bowl competition. More than 100 Pantex employees and community volunteers will run the competition Saturday, which will feature more than 30 teams from 15 schools across the Texas Panhandle. The high school competition will be held later this month.

Sandia National Laboratories employees and retirees in 2012 increased donations to the United Way of Central New Mexico by 17.1 percent over the previous year, giving $5,508,717 to the charitable organization. When it passed the $5 million mark, Sandia became the first company to donate that amount in a single campaign to United Way. Sandia’s employees in Livermore, Calif., added $236,227, making the total employee/retiree giving between both sites $5,744,944.

Ms. Hatcher educated the GHSAC on GTRI’s assets available to help train states’ officials and make their states more secure. She encouraged the development and reinforcement of the federal-state partnership including through outreach to new high-activity radiological source facilities and enhanced communication with local fusion centers. As a result of the briefing, GTRI was approached by many homeland security advisors that were eager to learn more about NNSA’s domestic security program and help set up outreach meetings within their states.

Dr. Blumenthal emphasized that NNSA’s office of emergency response program provides a single resource to support the states over the full range of radiological emergency response activities from crisis response through consequence management. There was recognition among the homeland security advisors that one of the key resources that NNSA assets provide is technical assessments needed for leaders to make public safety decisions.

A ribbon-cutting at the Savannah River Site opened the door to the first of two new buildings that the Savannah River Tritium Enterprise (SRTE) has scheduled for occupancy this year as part of its modernization program.

The Tritium Engineering Building is one of the cornerstones of NNSA's long-term plan to modernize and consolidate the Savannah River Site tritium facilities as part of its mission to turn a Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st Century nuclear security enterprise.

Addressing the crowd of employees gathered to witness the ribbon-cutting, NNSA Savannah River Field Office Manager Doug Dearolph credited the excellent partnership, teamwork and collaboration among NNSA, construction contractor Akima Construction Services and SRS management and operating contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions for completing the building with zero accidents and on budget.

The new Tritium Engineering Building, which will provide office space for nearly 100 engineers, is the first building in the Tritium Limited Area that will meet the Guiding Principles for Federal Leadership in High Performance and Sustainable Buildings. The guiding principles cover: integrated design principles, optimized energy performance, water conservation, indoor environmental quality and reduced environmental impact of materials.

About the photo:(From left) Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Senior Vice President for NNSA Operations & Programs Dennis Donati, NNSA Savannah River Field Office Manager Doug Dearolph, and Akima Construction Services President Paul Karmanzinski open the Savannah River Site’s new Tritium Engineering Building.

The Center for Strategic & International Studies has selected two NNSA employees as part of its 2013 class for the Nuclear Scholars Initiative. The recently selected scholars hail from NNSA’s Defense Nuclear Security and Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation programs.

Craig Wiener, a Defense Nuclear Security specialist, is a doctoral candidate in Biodefense at George Mason University, and specializes in national security technology policy, international security, counterproliferation, and intelligence studies. His research as a CSIS Nuclear Scholar will involve countering Uranium-233 proliferation pathways for states seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Alicia Swift, a Global Threat Reduction Initiative fellow and nuclear engineering PhD candidate at University of Tennessee, is currently conducting physical protection upgrades at sites within the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean that house nuclear and radiological material. She is also working on the conversion of U.S. high performance research reactors from HEU to LEU fuel as part of her fellowship.

Each year, CSIS selects roughly 20 graduate students and young professionals throughout the U.S. to participate in the initiative. During the six-month program, the Scholars meet regularly to discuss nuclear weapons issues and prepare individual papers that are published in a CSIS-produced journal.

NNSA earlier this month conducted a training course on Consequence Management (I-CM) in Israel. The training, held in the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, was attended by 25 Israeli participants. The training focused on how to respond to a radiological terrorism event.

Sidney Drell, physicist, arms control expert and adviser, is one of 12 eminent researchers recently named by President Obama as a recipient of the National Medal of Science. In addition, 11 inventors are recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Both awards represent the highest honors bestowed by the United States government upon scientists, engineers and inventors.

Drell was recognized for his research on quantum electrodynamics and quantum chronodynamics and for applying basic physics to public policy, national security and intelligence.

Drell, who until he retired last March was a member of the Board of Governors for both Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, and Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the managing contractors for the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories since 2008 and 2007, respectively, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution where his work has focused on nuclear nonproliferation. He also is a professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Drell will formally receive his award from President Obama at a White House ceremony to be scheduled in early 2013.

Sandia principal technologist Richard Simpson has filled a canyon with soap bubbles, shot photos of flaming liquefied natural gas from a helicopter, floated balloons hundreds of feet in the air to calibrate cameras, chopped out pieces of a Cape Canaveral launch pad to haul across the country for tests, and hoisted a beer with Paul Tibbets, pilot of the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan in World War II.

He also has been audited for buying such things as party bubble juice on his government procurement card.

“You buy 20 party bubble machines, they kind of wonder why. You buy 50 gallons of party bubble juice, and they really wonder why,” he said.

Simpson has worked with NASA, DOE, United Launch Alliance, the Air Force and others at Sandia and Cape Canaveral to help solve problems and sign agreements.

About the photo:Principal Technologist Richard Simpson adjusts an igniter assembly at a lake Sandia built a few years ago to conduct the world’s largest liquefied natural gas fire tests ever done on water.